Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

you with a knife or poison. He is jealous, so I have put him in the corner and I shall not speak to him today. He has just tried to kill me. You must help me with the breakfast. He is almost too jealous to trust, just now.”

Now a genuine imported Sahib from England would have made a great to-do over this tale. Lurgan Sahib stated it as simply as Mahbub Ali was used to record his little affairs in the North.

The back veranda of the shop was built out over the sheer hillside, and they looked down into their neighbours’ chimney-pots, as is the custom of Simla. But even more than the purely Persian meal cooked by Lurgan Sahib with his own hands, the shop fascinated Kim. The Lahore Museum was larger, but here were more wonders⁠—ghost-daggers and prayer-wheels from Tibet; turquoise and raw amber necklaces; green jade bangles; curiously packed incense-sticks in jars crusted over with raw garnets; the devil-masks of overnight and a wall full of peacock-blue draperies; gilt figures of Buddha, and little portable lacquer altars; Russian samovars with turquoises on the lid; eggshell china sets in quaint octagonal cane boxes; yellow ivory crucifixes⁠—from Japan of all places in the world, so Lurgan Sahib said; carpets in dusty bales, smelling atrociously, pushed back behind torn and rotten screens of geometrical work; Persian water-jugs for the hands after meals; dull copper incense-burners neither Chinese nor Persian, with friezes of fantastic devils running round them; tarnished silver belts that knotted like raw hide; hairpins of jade, ivory, and plasma; arms of all sorts and kinds, and a thousand other oddments were cased, or piled, or merely thrown into the room, leaving a clear space only round the rickety deal table, where Lurgan Sahib worked.

“Those things are nothing,” said his host, following Kim’s glance. “I buy them because they are pretty, and sometimes I sell⁠—if I like the buyer’s look. My work is on the table⁠—some of it.”

It blazed in the morning light⁠—all red and blue and green flashes, picked out with the vicious blue-white spurt of a diamond here and there. Kim opened his eyes.

“Oh, they are quite well, those stones. It will not hurt them to take the sun. Besides, they are cheap. But with sick stones it is very different.” He piled Kim’s plate anew. “There is no one but me can doctor a sick pearl and re-blue turquoises. I grant you opals⁠—any fool can cure an opal⁠—but for a sick pearl there is only me. Suppose I were to die! Then there would be no one⁠ ⁠… Oh no! You cannot do anything with jewels. It will be quite enough if you understand a little about the Turquoise⁠—some day.”

He moved to the end of the veranda to refill the heavy, porous clay water-jug from the filter.

“Do you want drink?”

Kim nodded. Lurgan Sahib, fifteen feet off, laid one hand on the jar. Next instant, it stood at Kim’s elbow, full to within half an inch of the brim⁠—the white cloth only showing, by a small wrinkle, where it had slid into place.

“Wah!” said Kim in most utter amazement. “That is magic.” Lurgan Sahib’s smile showed that the compliment had gone home.

“Throw it back.”

“It will break.”

“I say, throw it back.”

Kim pitched it at random. It fell short and crashed into fifty pieces, while the water dripped through the rough veranda boarding.

“I said it would break.”

“All one. Look at it. Look at the largest piece.”

That lay with a sparkle of water in its curve, as it were a star on the floor. Kim looked intently. Lurgan Sahib laid one hand gently on the nape of his neck, stroked it twice or thrice, and whispered: “Look! It shall come to life again, piece by piece. First the big piece shall join itself to two others on the right and the left⁠—on the right and the left. Look!”

To save his life, Kim could not have turned his head. The light touch held him as in a vice, and his blood tingled pleasantly through him. There was one large piece of the jar where there had been three, and above them the shadowy outline of the entire vessel. He could see the veranda through it, but it was thickening and darkening with each beat of his pulse. Yet the jar⁠—how slowly the thoughts came!⁠—the jar had been smashed before his eyes. Another wave of prickling fire raced down his neck, as Lurgan Sahib moved his hand.

“Look! It is coming into shape,” said Lurgan Sahib.

So far Kim had been thinking in Hindi, but a tremor came on him, and with an effort like that of a swimmer before sharks, who hurls himself half out of the water, his mind leaped up from a darkness that was swallowing it and took refuge in⁠—the multiplication-table in English!

“Look! It is coming into shape,” whispered Lurgan Sahib.

The jar had been smashed⁠—yess, smashed⁠—not the native word, he would not think of that⁠—but smashed⁠—into fifty pieces, and twice three was six, and thrice three was nine, and four times three was twelve. He clung desperately to the repetition. The shadow-outline of the jar cleared like a mist after rubbing eyes. There were the broken shards; there was the spilt water drying in the sun, and through the cracks of the veranda showed, all ribbed, the white house-wall below⁠—and thrice twelve was thirty-six!

“Look! Is it coming into shape?” asked Lurgan Sahib.

“But it is smashed⁠—smashed,” he gasped⁠—Lurgan Sahib had been muttering softly for the last half-minute. Kim wrenched his head aside. “Look! Dekho! It is there as it was there.”

“It is there as it was there,” said Lurgan, watching Kim closely while the boy rubbed his neck. “But you are the first of many who has ever seen it so.” He wiped his broad forehead.

“Was that more magic?” Kim asked suspiciously. The tingle had gone from his veins; he felt unusually wide awake.

“No, that was not magic. It was only to see if there was⁠—a flaw in a jewel.